It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks here at the farm. I’ve finished trimming and fertilizing my orchard. I’m sure I horrify my big orchard neighbors that pass by with my efforts, but I don’t care. Think goblet-shaped, open-center trees for peaches and plums, and a strong center and layers for apples and pears. You have to imagine how things will look if you just let them grow. No crossing branches, and no branches that will snap under a full load of fruit. It’s hard. These are my babies. Messing them up at this stage will last the life of the tree. Orchard work however is one of my favorite jobs. The dogs and cats can come out to help without getting into too much trouble, and we all have fun. I’m waiting now for green to start showing before I can spray for bugs and diseases. The buds are already starting to swell, and I love tree blossoms on the fruit ridge in springtime. Pinks for peaches, whites for plums, and a combination for apples. I smell plum blossoms just by thinking about them.
We also finished trimming the raspberry rows. This is a job neither Fran or I care for. As soon as it’s bearable to work outside in March we get out and thin the raspberry canes. This involves putting on a full set of Carhartt heavy duty gear, and kneeling at the base of the plants with a limb lopper and thinking of the three D’s — Dead, Disease, and Diameter. First I cut off all the dead canes from last year. Then I go and cut all the diseased (really not many) or ones I just don’t like the look of (more), and finally just keep cutting small ones off until we finally arrive at three- to five healthy canes per hill left. It usually takes us three days to get done. By that time my knees are throbbing from the cold ground, and despite wearing leather gloves my hands get covered with thorns. I still have a thorn from last fall embedded in my thumb. It reminds me where it is from time to time.
A year ago, I made the effort to get my hearing tested and to no surprise was prescribed hearing aids. I knew I was missing conversations at market. It was become more and more often that customers were coming up and saying “Hzz bufazoo whatzit?” and smile, and I’m thinking, “oh oh, that requires a response.” I’d reply “yes” in hopes that would solve the problem. I was losing sales and now you have my attention. In any event, hearing aids pretty much just involve jamming them in in the morning and taking them out and putting them on the charger at night. The problem I have is doing field work with them. It’s hot and sweaty I always am messing with my hat and swatting at bugs. If I am running a piece of equipment, I don’t want to hear it, on the other hand if the boss wants to talk to me I want to hear her. So what do you do? One night when I went to take them out one was missing! No clue where it went. I searched everywhere, and finally replaced it. If you know me, you will understand this really bothers me. After all my years in Maintenance and Engineering, if I own something, it may not look the best, but you can darn well bet it’s going to be in one piece and is going to work. I also hate spending money unnecessarily. So after shelling out several hundred dollars for another aid, I acquired two new habits. One is to tap my ears regularly to make sure they are still with me, the other is to look down at the ground and searching while mourning the lost aid.
I told you that story so I can get to this one: Last year we planted sugar snap peas really early and the gamble paid off, so we decided to try it again. People love fresh veggies in the spring. While tilling the ground in preparation to seeding the peas, guess what popped up in the fresh dirt? My hearing aid! It spent all winter buried in the ground, survived getting tilled — twice — and it seems to work fine. It wasn’t even close to where I thought I had lost it. Time to buy a lottery ticket.
The best part of the week was finishing fertilizing our fields. I never imagined how excited we could get over cow manure, but we do. We call it black gold. We have not been able to apply manure since the COVID year. This involves going to our organic dairy farm friend, getting a pickup full of manure loaded. Driving home praying the truck doesn’t break, (and imagining conversations with the tow truck driver when he picks you up). Driving on the fields, praying this time the ground is frozen enough so you don’t get stuck (along with more tow truck imagined conversations). Then we both hand-shovel the manure where needed. We did this six times. I have learned to keep one eye on where the boss with the other shovel is flinging manure. We also got bunny manure and chicken manure going. The manure makes a huge difference. The cow manure is aged, so it shovels well, and there is no runoff. You can ask me where I got it, but I’m not telling. We guard that like a favorite fishing hole or hunting spot.
All the best to you. The greenhouse is stuffed, and we are ready for warm weather.